Cormack argues that the study of geography played a crucial role in shaping England's imperial ambitions.

Cormack demonstrates that geography was part of the Arts curriculum between 1580 and 1620, read at university by a broad range of soon-to-be political, economic, and religious leaders. By teaching these young Englishmen to view their country in a global context, and to see England playing a major role on that stage, geography helped develop a set of shared assumptions about the feasibility and desirability of an English empire.

The study of geography also provided new research methods and assumptions about natural philosophy, as well as a threefold approach to the formerly unified field of geography itself. Through its new subdivisions - mathematical geography, descriptive geography, and chorography (local history) - geography encouraged quantification of the world, an inductive methodology, and an ideology that prized utilitarian knowledge above all else.